A member of the British Commission for Military History and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society as well as the author of Mud, Blood and Poppycock and Blood, Sweat and Arrogance, Gordon Corrigan gives us a broad reassessment of World War II, from its origins to its prosecution. He argues that it was in fact two separate conflicts: one against Germany (and, for a while, Italy) in Western Europe, Soviet Russia and North Africa; the other against Japan in the Far East and Pacific. Each had distinct causes and was fought in different ways against very different enemies who rarely, if ever, coordinated their efforts. Britain's own part in the war comes in for particularly close scrutiny, including an agonizing series of defeats, and bankruptcy and the loss of her empire a virtual certainty by the war's end.

"Corrigan offers a superlative big picture. In particular, the author masterfully presents the military buildup in Japan, the rise of extreme nationalism, emperor worship and Japanese sense of racial superiority as factors feeding the smoldering resentment against the Western powers that unleashed itself in horrific treatment of prisoners and civilians during the war. Engaging reading down to the footnotes."—Kirkus Reviews